I'm recreating a new edition of a book that was originally created in Quark. It uses round-ended text frames. When using the simplest method of corner options, the ends aren't proper semicircles, even though the radius is set to half the height of the frame.

The other problem is that I can't reduce the width sufficiently to make it look balanced. I use the direct selection tool to close in the right-hand end, so that I don't distort the shape. There's no right indent for the paragraph, but as I reduce the width the text breaks into two lines, even though I've greater space after the text than the left indent. My best solution was to create the shape in Illustrator and copy and paste into InDesign, assign text content, centre thte text vertically, use 3mm left indent. I still couldn't pull the right-hand end in tight enough. So I had to resort to making a group of the lozenge shape with a normal rectangular text frame on top.

Does anyone know why these problems occur, and can Adobe improve the corner option?

Here's a grab showing non-printing characters and the frames selected. I've used the Pathfinder, but just to make sure the shape had the fewest points (six) I drew it in Illustrator as well. Don't know why I get the standoff (inset) on the right side. It appears to equal the height of the frame!

The bug appears to be in how ID fits the text in the frame. At a long length you can left, center or right-align the text in that shape and it will works fine, but as you shorten the shape you reach a point where there is more space on eihter end than was used when that end was the one to which the text was previously aligned, so you would expect the text to continue to fit if you shorten some more, but when you do the line breaks. Making the frame a bit deeper restores the line, which would lead you to think the leading slug is running up against the curves, but that's not a problem when you have the longer frame (you can highlight the text to see the slug and it is tucking into the curve area), so if it becomes a problem, I think that's a bug.

One Sledgehammer Script coming up: select your text frame and run this little Javascript. It adds rounded sides as per original frame size and copies line color and thickness from the text frame (where it is removed). Then it groups everything together, and leaves it selected (since you started with a selection as well).

It adds the new objects (rectangle, circles) simply to the parent of the selected text frame -- under normal circumstances, that ought to be the page you are looking at.

One last refinement: It's convenient if the script allows you to Undo/Redo its actions -- let me add that for completeness' sake. The following is the complete script again, no further editing required.